It will take more than policing to curb gun crime

Another day and another death from gun crime. Yesterday, there was news of a murder in London's Hackney. This followed a week of grim reports from south London. The death of 15-year-old Billy Cox in his own home was shocking, as horrifying as the murders just a few days before of Michael Dosunmu and James Andre Smartt-Ford.

The police argue for a sense of proportion. Gun crime, they say, is falling, including in Manchester, where there were three more shootings yesterday, and London. In Manchester, the Xcalibre campaign launched by Greater Manchester police has seen a fall in gun crime since 2004, while despite last week's outbreak in London, the Metropolitan Police have a good recent record, with incidents falling by 14 per cent last year.

Yet the figures disguise a more deep-seated trend. Gun crime has been rising for more than 20 years, and if last year's figures show a reduction, they still remain the highest for a decade. Moreover, there has been a jump in the use of guns in public places. The recent good performance in London and Manchester shows what can be achieved by well-organised policing and the country will want to see the efforts redoubled after last week's events. But they do not address the underlying cause, nor the rise in gun use.

The reality is that among a section of the population, mainly young and often black, ownership of guns is growing and there is a greater readiness to use them in often trivial circumstances. Hard questions have to be asked and answered about what is happening on large council housing estates in our major cities, where so many of the gangs live and where gun crime is incubated.

There is no movement out of such estates - where, in some cases, more than three-quarters of tenants are dependent on welfare, because such cheap housing is impossible to find in the private sector - and no movement in. They have become economic and social sinks where peer groups of young men resort to gang violence as the source of respect otherwise unavailable. There is no prospect of upward social mobility.

The black community has acknowledged that being routinely discriminated against is not an adequate explanation for why its young men fall disproportionately into crime. There is a link between endemic patterns of family breakdown, poor fathering and the moral disorientation of some young men.

There is a reflex reaction to sudden clusters of gun crime. The right talks about social breakdown and the collapse of the family, and the need for tougher controls and laws. The left talks about the need for more social investment. The correct response is more calibrated. Laws against carrying guns certainly need to be tougher still and the focused policing methods used in Manchester and London need to be redoubled.

We should consider urgently Sir Ian Blair's call last week for criminals to face the mandatory five-year sentence for possession of a firearm from the age of 17 rather than 21 as at present.

However, as this measure could mean even younger children being used by gangs to carry weapons on behalf of their older peers, this alone will not be enough. Tougher sentences in a climate which is already highly repressive will inevitably add to a prison population which is the biggest in Europe.

But there is no cause for panic. A rash of violent crimes in a short space of time can look like the start of an epidemic. But these spasms of violence have happened before and been contained with a combination of targeted policing and investment in urban regeneration. That is what happened before in cities across Britain from London to Glasgow.

The recent murders are crimes, albeit horrific ones. The problem is that ordinary criminals commit more horrific crimes when armed. The recent shootings show the urgent priority to get firearms off the streets.